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Lord Curzon, winner of the election

The January 1908 Irish representative peer election was held to fill a vacancy among the 28 Irish representative peers at the time elected for life to the British House of Lords, with ballots sent by post to the 134 Irish peers eligible to vote. The winner was Lord Curzon (pictured), the former viceroy of India, who had never been to Ireland and owned no Irish lands. A former MP, he stood to return to parliament after being denied an earldom by the prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. As he had not asked the House of Lords to affirm his right to vote in Irish representative peer elections, as required to vote in them, some stated that Curzon was ineligible for election. Despite a late start and opposition to him as non-Irish, Curzon led with two votes more than Lord Ashtown, who had two more than Lord Farnham, but the official return noted Curzon was not among those who could vote. When the House of Lords convened, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Loreburn, declared Curzon the winner. (Full article...)

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In the news

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On this day

November 30: Saint Andrew's Day (Christianity)

The Flying Scotsman

1700 – Great Northern War: Swedish forces led by King Charles XII defeated the Russian army at the Battle of Narva.
1934 – Flying Scotsman (pictured) became the first steam locomotive officially to exceed 100 miles per hour (161 km/h).
1953 – Mutesa II, Kabaka of Buganda, was temporarily deposed and exiled to London by Andrew Cohen, the British governor of Uganda.
1954 – A meteorite crashed through a roof in Sylacauga, Alabama, and hit a sleeping woman in the first verified case of a human being injured by an extraterrestrial object.
1999 – A series of protests by anti-globalization activists against the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle forced the cancellation of the opening ceremonies.

Richard Farrant (d. 1580)
Jagadish Chandra Bose (b. 1858)
Eir Aoi (b. 1988)
Cherry Valentine (b. 1993)

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Today's featured picture

Winston Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from 1922 to 1924, he was a member of Parliament from 1900 to 1964, representing five different constituencies. This black-and-white photograph of Churchill, titled The Roaring Lion, was taken on 30 December 1941 by the Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada. The photograph is particularly noted for Churchill's posture and facial expression, which have been compared to the wartime feelings that prevailed in the United Kingdom – persistence in the face of an all-conquering enemy.

Photograph credit: Yousuf Karsh

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